You can be responsible and quiet all day, and go to bed every night without acting up at all, but I think everyone, of every age, sometimes feels young and crazy. There's a particular feeling I'm talking about—a certain transgressive innocence, and loud and conscious abandon—that everyone should indulge in every few months. I'm not talking about really getting into trouble, or doing anything one might ever regret, but just about letting your hair down and acting happy.

I've always been the quiet and well-behaved type, but I think that means I know what I'm talking about more than anyone else. Like a favorite song, this feeling wears out if you play it too often. In fact, I know some hard partiers who don't seem like they get any real happiness out of it at all. But I've had true good times.

A few years ago I was on the way back from a swimming event with my friends, Samantha, Katie, Dan, JR, and Jonathan. I had ridden to the event with Danielle, a responsible driver who got us there safely and in time. But she had already left by the time the rest of us had to go back, and so we all crammed into Samantha's big shiny black pickup and left. She let Dan drive. "It's your car!" I said. "Why do you want him to drive?" "You'll see," she said with a smile. She turned on the radio, all the way up. Dan climbed into the driver's seat with a big grin. He was seventeen, skinny with black hair and a big pretty smile. He was attractive to older women and he knew it. He had once charmed our fifty-year-old boss into buying him enough vodka to make him pass out. Now he had charmed twenty-two-year-old Samantha into letting him drive her beautiful truck like a little maniac.

We tore out of the parking lot. We rolled down the windows. Katie was sitting on Jonathan's lap and they were leaning out of the window and screaming, and the music was so loud that we couldn't even have pulled over for a siren. Dan drove with zest and joy, and purposeful lack of skill, and we careened around corners and sped down every straightaway. I was enjoying every minute of it, though I knew at that moment that I was a stereotypically annoying young person, and I had never been one of those before. I knew that as soon as I got out of the truck, I would be myself again, responsible and sweet. And because of that, I think I was the only one in the truck who really understood what was going on and enjoyed it as much as it could possibly have been enjoyed; I was the only one who felt the contrast. I was singing along and smiling with happiness, and ready to cry as though nostalgia had taken hold of me while the thing itself was still happening.

I don't know what they're doing now. I'm Facebook friends with some of them, but I don't really keep in touch. I went to college. I got new friends and we studied together. Once we were all working hard in the basement of our dormitory, three days before the start of finals. We had been working for hours and our brains were just about fried. We knew we'd have to take a break pretty soon. And at that point, my friend Jae began to make some sounds that, as they got louder, formed words and a tune: "...the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide..." We all joined in. We were frazzled from studying for finals and we were too loud and frighteningly sincere: "I------don't want to diiiiiiiiiiee-------but I sometimes wish I hadn't been born at aaalllllllll!" All our eyes were tightly shut. Everyone in the room was singing, or rather screaming, and we all felt so much better after the song was over, about three minutes. A little risking a noise complaint does wonders for the brain. I know I'll be able to have times like this for the rest of my life, with anyone I'm with. I'm lucky not to be so obsessed with fun that I don't know it when I see it.